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Carrboro High supporters in full force at budget hearings

Posted on May 28, 2009October 30, 2009 by Staff

In case you’re wondering what the plans for the proposed arts wing look like . . . Photo by Kirk Ross.By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

At last week’s county budget hearing in Hillsborough and again Tuesday night at the Southern Human Services Center in Chapel Hill, the color purple and the plans for a new arts wing at Carrboro High School were on display.

Wearing Jaguar purple T-shirts with “Build It Now” emblazoned on the front and architectural plans for the new wing on the back, speaker after speaker, many of them students, filed up to the microphone to voice support of the project.

Students described how the school’s bands and theater department had to make do. The band often practices in the school’s weight room because the classroom it’s based in is too small. Theater performances are off-site at Culbreth Middle School.

Sophomore Elliot Darrow said the status quo was frustrating to students, parents and teachers alike.

“I urge you to build it now, build it now, build it now,” he said to the cheers of his classmates.

Several parents noted the facilities at Chapel Hill High and East Chapel Hill High and said that without an arts wing the high school is an incomplete facility. To save money on the initial construction cost, the school was built without an arts wing. The entryway to the proposed wing is on the right of the school’s main entrance.

Building the wing became much more likely a prospect at last week’s school board meeting after the board OK’d a capital plan to delay construction on a new elementary school planned for the Northside neighborhoods and move the wing ahead of it in priority.

The shift in the capital plans is due in part to slower-than-projected enrollment growth in the elementary schools and to a longstanding county policy to keep the debt burden under 15 percent of the annual budget. The Northside Elementary project would likely put the county over that cap.

Also at Tuesday’s meeting, students and parents asked commissioners to increase school funding to help prevent deeper personnel cuts. The district has laid off teaching assistants and cut the pay of locally funded teachers.

Other speakers before the commissioners included backers of the Carrboro Branch Library at McDougle School.

Heidi Perry, a member of Friends of the Library, said the county needs more library services, not fewer. Closing the Cedar Grove branch and the Carrboro branch, she said, “should not even be on the table.”

Allen Spalt called the decision to close the library a “false saving” because the Carrboro Branch is leveraged by the many volunteers who help it work. Closing the library after years of their efforts would be a slap in the face, he said.

Not everyone at the budget hearings were there to ask for additional funding. Former commissioner Ben Lloyd told the board to cut deeper than the $5.4 million already trimmed. High property taxes, he said, are forcing lifelong residents to move out of the county.

“People in Orange County are hurting, folks,” he said.

Also asking for support from the commissioners were residents of Efland who are facing a steep jump in sewer rates, and representatives of Community School for People Under Six, which is on Caldwell Street Extension in the Northside neighborhood.
Parents and members of the school staff are seeking help to renovate the facility in order to keep it open.

1 thought on “Carrboro High supporters in full force at budget hearings”

  1. Kay says:
    May 28, 2009 at 9:47 am

    If the art wing is going to be built to actually house arts programs and other arts teachers are not going to lose programs in the process, then by all means, build it. But be aware that middle school theatre arts programs in Chapel Hill are being eliminated (Phillips and significantly reduced at Smith) due to low allowcation
    budget. Many people are not aware of this, because you would never suspect theatre arts to be considered unimportant in middle school education. The Arts are designated as core curriculum by NCLB definition of core.
    An arts facility is great, provided we keep, and support our middle school arts that serve many students rather than a select few who can afford private lessons. Losing theatre arts in any capacity in this district is not in the best interest of all student. If some programs have lower enrollment than
    others,it is not because it is not a popular or important program to offer children, but that the program was not get the support or nurturing any program needs to survive among so many electives being offered in our district.

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